Archive for January, 2011

With the skies poised to dump an abominable amount of snow on us, I thought it might be wise to make a buttload of hearty beef stew to sustain us. I think it’s pretty tasty – we’ll know if it’s truly good if Niles gets home and eats the rest of it tonight. That’s how I know if I truly nailed a recipe: if there are no leftovers.

You know what I just realized? Almost everything in the pot is from a local farm! How about that. I think the onion was from a grocery store, but everything else is from a local CSA.

I’ve been peer-pressured into doing Hourly Comics tomorrow. I’ve never done this before because I usually think my days are pretty boring, but we shall see what we come up with. For all I know, there will be three solid hours of me trying to get from point A to point B, depending on when the snow starts. :)

Hey, did you know, it’s almost a year now that I’ve been doing Sauceome!

Initially I was thinking that I’d quit doing Sauceome after a year had gone by, but I feel like I’ve learned so much, and probably have so much more left to learn, so I’m definitely going to keep going. But I’d like to cut back just a little, maybe do three comics a week instead of five, so I have some more time to work on other comics as well. My main question for you guys: if I go to three days a week, would you still be at all interested in the food diary parts? I mean, I would probably still keep track of everything I eat just for myself, because it seems like a good habit, but is it at all interesting to you? Or would you rather just see a full page of comic/recipe/food illustration, Monday/Wednesday/Friday?

PS: I promise I’m looking into getting prints of some of the comics you’ve asked for, and I’m definitely going to be looking into doing a book of the first year’s worth of comics. Keep an eye out, I might be needing your help with a Kickstarter or something to fund it. :)

Ok. First off, manhattans. Strong manhattans. We had just worked a good 8 stressful hours on a freaking Saturday, and we were rewarding ourselves with manhattans. My brain was a little fried, and I’m pretty sure when the nice man asked “would you like them on the rocks or straight up,” my reply was, “YES.”

Anyway. Emily and I were discussing parents in general, and she dropped this bomb on me. YOU GUYS. WHAT IF SHE IS RIGHT? How did this never occur to me? I just figured I was, you know, constantly disappointing her. But, here’s the thing: when my dad said “when was your last oil change?” I never interpreted that question as meaning “you are a disappointment for not getting your oil changed more regularly.” It just meant that he was looking out for me. And yet I have always, always read the comments about my appearance as “you do not measure up” and never as “I’m just looking out for you.” I mean, okay, maybe it was sometimes misguided, maybe it often wasn’t phrased as delicately as it could have been. But my mom’s a very nice person, she would never tell me that I wasn’t good enough for her. How was I always so quick to believe she means something that she would never, ever say?

So, my apologies to my mother. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I was so eager to believe that you were just being mean. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that you might be just trying to look out for me (although, just to point out retroactively, pixie-short hair was really in that year, and all the guys I knew found it really cute), but I will try to learn to be less… reactionary in the future. :) Love you!

So, for someone who loves duck as much as I do, I can’t believe that I’ve never had proper Peking Duck before. We went to Sun Wah for lunch today, and had every piece of the tastiest, most succulent duck I have ever had. First, they carved the duck for us at the table, setting out slices of breast and the legs and wings with steamed Chinese pancakes, daikon radishes, carrots, and green onions with a sweet plum sauce, so we could assemble perfect little duck sandwiches. This might have been my favorite part, although the rest of it wasn’t too shabby either. A few minutes later they came out with a plate of duck fried rice, made from the rest of the meat left over after the carving, and a few minutes after THAT they came back with a bowl of soup made from the bones of the duck! It was an insane amount of food, even split between four people. Who knew you could get such a feast out of one tiny duck?

Also: Hot & Sour soup is excellent for sad coughy throats. So, of course, is duck soup, and also black tea, so my poor beleaguered respiratory system was happy to eat here for lunch too.

(Speaking of which: my fortune cookie said “Accept something you cannot change, and you will feel better.” I chose to read it in the context of this lingering cold virus. Ancient Chinese medicine! Accept something that you cannot change, and YOUR LUNGS WILL BE PURGED OF THE RHINOVIRUS. Now I just have to find something I can’t change and accept the hell out of it.)

I actually had a completely different comic in my mind earlier today before my taste buds were hijacked by Sun Wah and their magnificent duckery, so I will save that one for tomorrow.

In other news, this evening our fridge contained not only taco SHRIMP, but taco TILAPIA and also taco MAHI MAHI. So many taco flavored sea creatures to choose from! I picked tilapia, and was not disappointed.

So clearly I’m feeling better if I managed to completely catch up on all the Sauceomes that fell behind. I’m still coughing like a … well, like a thing that coughs violently, and quite a lot; I’m still pretty run down, and my eyeballs still ache. But I’m not praying for the sweet release of an early death any more, so it’s a step in the right direction. It’s amazing how much comfort you can get from little things like yellow afghans and tomato soup.

Ok. I’m a little worn out from three comics in a row, so I’ll stop there, and go to bed early. G’night!

As it turns out, if you don’t take care of yourself, YOU CAN GET SICK. This is a serious scientific discovery, guys. We should alert the authorities.

Quite seriously though, it does seem to be one of those stupid little common sense things that I never seem to properly grasp. If you eat well, get plenty of sleep, don’t drink to excess, your immune system is stronger. It’s so SIMPLE.

When I get sick though, it’s always amazing to me how little appetite I have. We got lunch from La Cazuela, you guys know how much I love their shrimp tacos, and their guacamole is amazing. They even made us chicken soup this time. It was great – and I couldn’t stomach more than a few bites of any of it. I picked all of the shrimp out of the tacos and barely touched the tortillas. After (yet one more) exceedingly long work day, I came home and ate 6 cold raviolis without even warming them up or putting some sauce on them, and it almost felt like an effort to eat that much.

I guess a stopped up nose means a dulled sense of taste, or something. Either way, I’m always happy when my appetite returns. I guess it would be more convenient to my weight loss plans if food didn’t bring me such joy, but I prefer a life where food brings me joy.

Ok! Sorry once again for the posting lag. Between multiple 13 hour work days and succumbing to another cold, it’s been hard to stay on top of this. I was feeling so cruddy Sunday night I couldn’t even summon the energy to finish this one, and the weekend ones are always easy.

Anyway, I’m feeling better now, and catching up. Saturday involved two very strong, very good, very stress-induced manhattan cocktails on an empty stomach, which probably contributed to catching this cold. The thing about me and whiskey (bourbon, scotch, whatever) is that once I have a little, it impairs my ability to make wise decisions, and I do dumb things like have ANOTHER manhattan, and then I go and find my boyfriend and have a beer or two as well. This is why we never have whiskey in the house.

So I worked almost 13 hours today, on a thankless project that will extend into at least as many hours Friday and VERY probably Saturday and Sunday also. I rather hate my job lately. Really, really hate it. I used to love it, and now, I just dread getting out of bed in the morning. I came home sobbing, fighting back tears on the train and then the bus. Niles was at the Small Bar and lured me in with promises of Cappuccino stout, which made it a little better. They had a special mac and cheese with grilled steak, mushrooms, onion and blue cheese, and I ordered it because I was angry, beyond angry, really, at my stupid, shitty, horrible day, and the three stupid shitty horrible days that are waiting for me on the other end of a too-short sleep tonight.

I regretted it almost immediately. It tasted good, but not good enough to make me feel better. At least I only ate half of it. I guess I really am past trying to fill emotional holes with food. It was an okay mac but, ultimately, unsatisfying. Now I’m going to sleep and try not to dream about how horrible the next three days are going to be.

I got a new coat! I got tired of apologizing to everyone for how ugly my yellow coat is. If I ever get to bike again, I will have to wear Ol’ Yeller, but in the meantime I am consoling my bus-bound self with a new coat. It is soft and comfy and feminine (and by the gods I actually could have ordered a size smaller, imagine that) and it makes me feel pretty awesome. The New Coat Awesomes, plus some very nice comments and emails I’ve gotten lately (you guys are so great) have been making me think lately about how much time I wasted feeling like I didn’t deserve to wear nice clothes, much less feel like I looked cute in them. I feel pretty awesome in this coat. Everyone deserves to feel this awesome in something. EVERYONE. Take some time to think about that – I mean yes, of course we all agree on principle that everyone deserves to feel this great. But there’s a difference between saying yes yes, we all deserve to feel beautiful and actually, for reals, believing that YOU deserve to feel beautiful.

Anyway, if I may take a moment to hype my boyfriend, he bought me more taco shrimp, and a 20 oz Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout (man I’m going to be sad when it goes out of season again) AAAAAND JUST DANCE 2. Which I will be playing in place of being able to bike, now that my city is covered in a thin layer of ice.

So Urban Belly has this soup, this amazing soup full of shrimp and udon noodles and veggies, and just enough chilis to open up your sinuses. I crave it on cold nights. The clouds have been spitting mean little ice pellets at us all day, and to make matters worse I’ve been coughing and hacking all day long. My throat wanted this soup tonight. My throat wanted it badly enough that I got off the bus early to pick it up, and walked home A MILE in the ice with it. Fortunately it was still pretty hot when I got home. And doubly fortunately, I managed to only eat HALF of it, so I can warm up the other half for lunch tomorrow, because I’m pretty sure I’m still going to be coughing, and thus still craving this soup.

Last year I spent a bunch of months trying to figure out how to replicate this soup, actually. I never succeeded, at least not to my satisfaction. Anyone have any recipes for a Thai style chili/lime/shrimp/cilantro/udon soup for me to try? :)